


the better kind of noteworthy

by stephanericher



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 12:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13100460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: [no tlj spoilers] Somehow, all of Ren’s standard expressiveness, his instability, are conveyed without Hux able to see his face, but that shouldn’t be surprising.





	the better kind of noteworthy

**Author's Note:**

> for mon, who wanted a non-spoilery kylux
> 
> also for me bc i haven't written them since like february and i need to try & dig into their characters again before i start approaching tlj stuff. apologies for unevenness.

The first time they’d slept together, Hux has found Ren rather disconcerting. Not in the way he usually is (though that’s different, and either one certainly isn’t at a level that legitimately bothers or interferes with Hux, a mere annoyance at most) but rather juxtaposed against that. He swallows the sounds he doesn’t want to make, quietly hissing or holding it back, rolling his hips or flicking his tongue or grunting but never giving in, as if this is yet another thing he thinks he can hold over Hux’s head. Like using the Force, like destroying the pristine halls of the _Finalizer_ (Hux thinks he’s held up rather well considering how much damage Ren has continued to do to his ship).

He should know what he’s up against, if he’s intent on making this a competition (as if it ever wasn’t). But no matter.

The most disconcerting thing is probably the most unintentional. Ren sleeps with the sheets tangled around him, predictably messy, halfway on top of Hux as if to cloak him like a poor physical shield (the way ships were millennia before the Old Republic was even the Old Republic and everything was primitive, or so they say in the history books that feel so far removed from the present that Hux almost doubts their veracity). That’s to be expected, but the silence is not. He doesn’t snore or breathe loudly; when he stirs it’s quiet and gradual like a rotating asteroid. There is something—not quite peaceful, not even quite like peaceful—about it, about him. It rubs Hux like a droid against his coat, unwanted electricity and a stinging sensation, improper because of how not out-of-place it seems. Hux can stand to look at Ren like this, think about him, nearly want to reach out and touch him for no reason. Somehow, all of Ren’s standard expressiveness, his instability, are conveyed without Hux able to see his face, but that shouldn’t be surprising.

That it feels like a realization is also wrong; it makes Hux feel stupid to arrive at such an obvious conclusion when he already knows it. It’s the same with the mask, the way Ren shuts it over his hair (that by any logic should get caught in it) and it seals down over his mouth. The vocabulator distorts his voice but makes the instabilities more pronounced, heightens the emotion in his words. The Force is supposed to make one control one’s emotions, is it not? Perhaps Ren is atypical (not like Snoke, not like firsthand accounts of Vader and Palpatine) but that’s the kind of thing he would wear like a war hero’s medal on his chest if it were the better kind of noteworthy. His pride is noticeable, his posture as he stamps through the halls as if he imagines himself to be a legendary beast, or the defeated and angry and more precise way his feet hammer the clean floor, as if attempting to leave a footprint that’s more than perhaps a smudge (if even that). They stand before the Supreme Leader, and Hux doesn’t so much as flick his gaze or tilt his chin to see Ren’s stance change with a word or phrase from Snoke’s hologram throat. And when Ren looks (it would be so easy—if he can even see inside that mask, but assuming he can—to just flick his gaze, hold his neck steady, or reach out telepathically if he’s so powerful in that way) it’s like he’s making a point to, only wrapped around to where it’s unconscious, the curiosity of a child. Perhaps it’s the lack of intention that bothers Hux, but dissecting reasons of the past when there’s all of this in the present is counterproductive. The past is not useless, but hindsight is overvalued, and when circumstances are winding tight like invasive vines around him, around this, it is more pertinent to cut through them now than to pull it up from the roots.

And nothing at all is accomplished by mentally pontificating, sitting here next to Ren when he has work to do. A bridge to inspect, troops to watch (and remind that the universe is more than barracks and marching and immediate heads of division), reports to deliver to the Supreme Leader, a routine to which to adhere and some sort of example to set. (This, here, is becoming closer to a routine, but of all its aspects this is one of the least worrisome, for whatever kind of person Ren is this is clear, straightforward.) He’s distracted again; there is work for him to do. There is work for Ren to do, too, not that he does much other than inexplicably hold the Supreme Leader’s favor—that’s unfair, perhaps. Hux is not privy to the Force, its meaning. The Supreme Leader knows what he’s doing, and, in some respects at least, so does Ren, volatile and inexperienced as he is.

Like a trooper pretending not to snap to attention when they overhear their name under an officer’s breath as part of a conversation they shouldn’t be listening to, Ren pretends not to stir. A twitch perhaps hidden or brushed aside under the volumes of robes, but when it’s just his bare shoulders, the discernible slope against the crumpled white sheet, it’s obvious. Hux sighs, tempted to ask if Ren is reading his thoughts (but that would be stupid, an admission of not knowing, ceding just a little but overall far more than he wants to, to Ren). Ren reaches out, rough and slow, enough time for Hux to attempt to get away. Hux lets Ren’s fingers scrape across his thigh, waits for some kind of response. Nothing.

“Get off,” says Hux.

Ren is, of course, pretending to be asleep; Hux has to pull him off and he is not light. A thought pops in his head, that he should train more. That had better not be Ren; if it is Hux sneers at him (and if it isn’t but he stops pretending to sleep, this is nothing new).

**Author's Note:**

> also next year i resolve to write at least 50% of my fics with zero sleeping people in them but until then it's still 2017 yolo


End file.
